Page 126 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

Shadows of Deception

Apollo 14, NASA Archives, AS14-68-9486

(Photo toward the LM from Station H. Shepard is to the left of the spacecraft with his back to us
looking in the general direction of the LM and, beyond it, Old Nameless. As per request from
Houston, he is aiming the TV camera at the MESA.)
[Source: http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html]

It is difficult to sustain a deception that is dependent upon current technology to create an illusion.
As years pass and technology advances, the ability of the average man to detect the deception
increases. When the Moon missions were displayed to the world in the years 1969-1972, television
recording technology had not yet reached the consumer. The Sony Betamax tape system would not
be released until 1975, and VHS would not reach consumers until 1976. Even then, it would take
years for video recording technology to become commonplace in homes. The television viewer in
the years of the Apollo missions had no way to capture a television broadcast and play it back for
careful examination.

Similarly, still images which were displayed in the newspapers and magazines of the day provided
only a limited means of scrutinizing the Apollo images. Newsprint is typically black and white and
low definition. Magazines offer better image quality, but there is often doubt as to whether the
magazine has altered an image in some manner, or whether it is a faithful reproduction of an original
image. If someone detects an anomaly in a magazine image relating to the lunar landings, NASA can
argue that the image had been altered by the periodical’s editors and is not authentic.

With the advent of the Internet, and the widespread dissemination of videos on tape, disk, or in
electronic format such as digital downloads, people have available to them tools for examining the
Apollo Program’s material which were unknown to a previous generation. Archives of NASA’s
images are available on official government sites. They can be accessed by anyone with an Internet
connection, and carefully scrutinized with powerful image editing software on home computers
whose processing capabilities dwarf even the largest mainframe computers of the Apollo era. This